Updated:
05/09/2008
Dr. Walter Reed (1851-1902)
Conqueror of the Yellow Fever
Walter Reed was born on September 13, 1851, in a small country home at Belroi, Gloucester County, Virginia. He was the last of five children of the Reverend Lemuel Sutton Reed and his wife Pharaba White. His father was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who moved every two years to a different circuit of the church.
It was during a two year service (1851-1852) that Walter was born. He studied medicine at the University of Virginia. On July 1, 1869 Walter and nine other students received their M.D. degrees. He stood third in his class and was the youngest graduate of the Medical Department. Two years after receiving his diploma from Bellevue Hospital Medical College (New York University Medical Center), Reed sought an appointment in the Medical Corps of the United States Army and in 1875 he was commissioned as Assistant Surgeon, with the rank of first lieutenant.
In this same year he married Miss Emilie Lawrence, of Murfreesboro, North Carolina. He had two children Walter Lawrence Reed born at Fort Apache (1877) and Emilie Lawrence Reed born at Fort Omaha (1883). Stricken with appendicitis, he died of acute peritonitis on November 23, 1902. On the granite shaft over his grave is a bronze tablet with the legend: "He gave to man control over that dreadful scourge, yellow fever." Even more suitable than bronze as a memorial is the Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., established by the United States Army in 1906.
